


Man In The Mirror

by angelikitten



Category: Final Fantasy XII
Genre: Gen, Transgender
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-08-03
Updated: 2009-08-03
Packaged: 2017-10-05 10:38:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 798
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/40832
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/angelikitten/pseuds/angelikitten
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nobody knows men like Fran does.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Man In The Mirror

In the Wood things had been simpler: you rarely, if ever, had to deal with men.

\---

Fran was in no way sure what could have caused such a drastic change. It could possibly have been due to the Mist - it had always had such a huge effect on most Viera...

... and on _himself_. Getting people to acknowledge that was going to be difficult, to say the least. It was hard enough getting used to thinking about himself that way. He had denied it for so long already.

The body he had had all his life just did not feel comfortable anymore. He had thought, at one point, that it was probably just part of the aging process, but he had dismissed that when he realised that he had never seen any of the other Viera show even the slightest sign of feeling this way. He had never been a typical Viera, after all.

Upon further reflection, it had seemed much more likely that it was something to do with the shear amount of males that he had come into contact with since leaving the Wood. In the Wood, coming into contact with even one man in a lifetime could be seen as rare, and he had already exceeded that. He had met so many people, and such a variety of men. Balthier, Basch, Vaan, Larsa... They were all so different, yet all so obviously male, something that he'd recognised in himself. Yet while they all, with the possible exception of Vaan, treated him with complete and utter respect, they did not treat him in the same way that they treated each other. Even though Balthier had once, teasingly, described him as "one of the boys", this had no effect on how they treated him. They still saw him as female, as a _woman_, and therefore he was to be treated as such. And it wasn't something that he had only noticed in the males - the females did it just as much, whether they realised it or not.

It was as if there was some sort of division between the two that Fran could not see. All Viera were created equal. The same could obviously not be said for males and females of the other species.

When Fran had realised that being male was not the same as being seen as male, he had realised that denying to himself that he was male was pointless if he ever wanted to be comfortable in his own skin again.

Which was how he had got to this point - trying on new clothes in front of an old mirror, while trying to mimic the posture of a thousand faceless men. He was wearing more clothes than he had ever worn in his life yet it felt almost completely natural to be dressed in this way. But when he looked in the mirror he noticed that his breasts and hips were still highly noticeable, even in these clothes. He sighed, realising that switching over would take longer than he had originally thought. He would find a way to do it; he just had to be patient. As a Viera, he was blessed with an abundance of patience. Living for such a long time took a lot of it. Living in the wrong body for any amount of time took even more.

Standing in front of the mirror, it turned out, was one thing. Walking away from it was another completely. A glance backwards revealed a multitude of problems - a slight sway for the hips, a flexing of the foot, a general posture that he had never seen in a man's walk. How did men walk? He knew how they _didn't_, but that offered no clues as to how they _did_.

Observation, planning and, above all, patience - that was what was needed to make this work. He dared not look in the mirror even once as he changed back into his normal clothes, back to looking like the woman that the world wanted him to be. No-one would know what he had been doing, or that he was not anything other than what he appeared. Or, at least, no Hume would. The subtle expressions that a Viera could read so easily were barely even noticed by Hume eyes. Today, he could see this as a good thing - Humes had a tendency for asking too many questions, and he was not in the mood to answer any of them.

He kept thinking about the way men walked as he left in a vague attempt at finding Balthier. He was going to have to re-learn everything he thought he knew. It would be like learning to walk all over again.

There was only one thing that he knew for sure - the heels would have to go.


End file.
